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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27067765">Complementary Gods</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schnikeys/pseuds/Schnikeys_Discuss'>Schnikeys_Discuss (Schnikeys)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Clockie's Meta [31]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hollow Knight (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Analysis, Archived from radioactivesupersonic Blog, Character Analysis, Gen, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2019-04-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2019-04-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-09 00:15:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>790</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27067765</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schnikeys/pseuds/Schnikeys_Discuss</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"So a bunch of people have pointed out that Radiance and Grimm seem to have a lot of thematic and narrative elements that would seem to imply a connection  and a few, myself included, take that as them being siblings / counterpart gods in a sense."<br/>...<br/>"Furthering the idea of complimentary celestial themes for Hollow Knight Higher Beings: Pale King as the moon, and the White Lady as the earth."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Clockie's Meta [31]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974223</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Complementary Gods</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/gifts">ClockworkRainbow</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>So a bunch of people have pointed out that Radiance and Grimm seem to have a lot of thematic and narrative elements that would seem to imply a connection  and a few, myself included, take that as them being siblings / counterpart gods in a sense.</p><p>Radiance is canonically conflated with the dawn- the rising sun is the initial form she takes before you challenge her and her presence is foreshadowed in the Dreamers’ realms by the progressive lightening of the sky as less Dreamers are holding her back. This makes sense with how her light is a very vibrant orange-gold color. </p><p>Grimm, meanwhile, has a motif of red flame and darkness. The little we see of the realm around the Nightmare Heart is almost pitch black save for its scarlet glow. He’s also very friendly with Ghost, and Divine, in her dream nail dialogue, muses happily about fire and shadow ‘dancing together’.</p><p>Proposal: Grimm is the sunset counterpart to Radiance’s sunrise- Daybreak and Dusk. Radiance, the rising sun, banisher of the dark who sees it as an enemy she has to fight off, and Grimm, the setting sun, who welcomes it at the end of his life.</p><p>Radiance, who is conflated with resurgence, with coming back after silence, and Grimm, who appears as a final, spectacular show of light before the end.</p><hr/><p><a href="http://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/184332487000/so-a-bunch-of-people-have-pointed-out-that">Furthering the idea of complimentary celestial themes</a> for Hollow Knight Higher Beings: Pale King as the moon, and the White Lady as the earth.</p><p>Pale King is described as very bright and nearly omnipresent but he takes a rather stealthy presence in the game. We find out at the end, in the Birthplace cutscene, that it’s his voice we’ve been hearing from the whispering lore tablets, which are in a few places in the game but most prominently in the King’s Pass- the very first area. His color scheme in contrast to Radiance’s presents a very ‘cold’ air and the Pale Ore, that shares his distinctive color, is described as emanating an “icy chill”.</p><p>Of the ‘light’ gods, he is the closest connected with the darkness, to the point that he actively built soldiers and servant constructs by encasing the darkness in his power. He’s closer to it than even Grimm, who greets it as a friend but doesn’t directly exploit it himself. In certain folklore, the moon is also cited as being able to influence the minds of people- the root of the werewolf myth and even the concept of “lunacy” is the idea of mental states influenced by moonlight.</p><p>The moon also changes its face in an orderly and predictable manner, and while Grimm dies repeatedly, he seems to be reborn in the same image- the immature Grimmchild starts off looking a lot like Grimm and just becomes moreso as it develops. That leaves PK as the only god to radically restructure himself by his own hand, ‘waning’ to a much smaller form.</p><p>And it brackets him nicely as an opposite to Radiance, whom he eclipsed to gain power, and who, in a way, his era of control over Hallownest, given strength by the darkness of the void that he harnessed to defeat her, is the ‘night’ that the Radiance wishes to break free of. </p><p>Comparatively, White Lady is extremely, intimately close to the Pale King, though they can superficially appear distant- her chair is one of a <em>very small</em> number of personal touches in the dream of the White Palace, and the Kingsoul sends the message that when they were ruling, they unified their power and wielded it jointly.</p><p>She’s much larger than her husband, quite possibly the largest of any of the Higher Beings we see considering she suggests her roots stretch the length of the kingdom, possibly dwarfing even her husband’s cast-off shell if we assume the glowing, branchy protrusions at Kingdom’s Edge are her. The earth may not be larger than the sun, but given proximity, it sure <em>looks</em> that way from an earth-centered perspective. And while the White Lady is shiny and bright, she keeps that light hidden-mostly in the earth beneath her. She feels through the land, able to talk about her kingdom as if it is a part of her own body.</p><p>It also could nicely bracket the Pure Vessel as a star- possibly the <em>morning</em> star, given they have a dual theme of light and darkness under their own power, and wield it mostly in terms of shining shards, and given their task in challenging Radiance, they can be described as ‘chasing the sun’, and, when succumbing to the infection, they become her herald, rather than her warden, with their own light blotted out by the sun- just as stars become harder to see as the sun rises.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Analyses originally found here:<br/><a href="https://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/184332487000/so-a-bunch-of-people-have-pointed-out-that">https://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/184332487000/so-a-bunch-of-people-have-pointed-out-that</a><br/><a href="https://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/184332942045/furthering-the-idea-of-complimentary-celestial">https://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/184332942045/furthering-the-idea-of-complimentary-celestial</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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